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ABSTRACT
Indigenous communities around the globe increasingly resort to courts to seek protection for their individual and collective rights. Not only has the use of strategic litigation by Indigenous peoples to defend their human rights been underexplored but the role of Indigenous lawyers and experts is also a blind spot. Drawing on interdisciplinary, qualitative and collaborative research with Indigenous lawyers, experts and legal activists who are involved in the legal defence of the rights of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala, we foreground a complex legal ethnographic landscape regarding their intergenerational legal-political battle in a society facing transition from recent mass violence and the imposition of extractive economies. This article explores how their Indigenous lawyering is rooted in their Indigenous being and embedded in Indigenous water and land ontologies. We demonstrate how these Indigenous litigators are advancing through counter-hegemonic legal practice that goes beyond dominant Euro-Western and colonial legal positivistic assumptions about human-water-life relationships embedded in a racialised neoliberal legal structure. We argue that in contrast to human rights activist lawyers, they are occupying and exercising a differentiated role, through their positionality and their non-conventional practices, as transformative connectors of worlds before the courts or political ontological knowledge brokers, without falling into romanticism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Seminar ‘A Critical Look at Water Disputes: A Dialogue between Guatemala and Colombia’, Guatemala City, 23 November 2021, organised by the ERC RIVERS project in collaboration with the University Rafael Landívar. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-O9c3WXyGI (accessed March 3, 2023).
2 Constitutional Court of Guatemala, Ruling November 7, File 452–2019, (2019) 8, http://138.94.255.164/Sentencias/843425.452-2019.pdf (accessed March 3, 2023).
3 For a broader analysis of Guatemala’s legal debates about water regimes and the human right to water see: Diego Antonio Padilla Vassaux, ‘Contextualizando el debate sobre las leyes sobre agua y el derecho humano al agua en Guatemala’, Ánalisis Jurídico Político 5 (9) (2023): 65–88.
4 Edwin Rekosh, Buchko Kyara, and Terzieva Vessela, Pursuing the Public Interest. A Handbook for Legal Professional and Activists (Columbia Law School, 2001); Helen Duffy, Strategic Human Rights Litigation: Understanding and Maximising Impact (Hart Publishing, 2018); Open Society Justice Initiative, ‘Global Human Rights Litigation Report’ (2018), https://www.justiceinitiative.org/uploads/4e9483ab-a36f-4b2d-9e6f-bb80ec1dcc8d/litigation-global-report-20180428.pdf (accessed March 3, 2023).
5 Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala, memoria del silencio, Tz’inil na’ tab’al (Guatemala: CEH, 1999), https://memoriavirtualguatemala.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Guatemala-Memoria-del-Silencio.pdf (accessed March 3, 2023), 31–5.
6 Ibid., 43.
7 Jo-Marie Burt, Policy Brief: Strategic litigation in Cases of Gross Human Rights Violations in Guatemala: Impact and Lessons Learned (Guatemala: Impunity Watch, 2021).
8 Among them the expert opinion of Marta Elena Casaús in the emblematic trial of former General Ríos Montt. The recordings of all the expert opinions proposed by the parties are available at: https://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/peritajes-en-el-juicio-por-genocidio (accessed March 3, 2023).
9 More information available at: https://nimajpu.org/ (accessed March 3, 2023).
10 More information available at: https://m.facebook.com/people/Bufete-para-Pueblos-Ind%C3%ADgenas/100064882262740/ (accessed March 3, 2023).
11 More information available at: https://www.facebook.com/people/Asociacion-Chomija/100063455352764/ (accessed March 3, 2023).
12 Jeremy Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Litigation: Strategies for Legal Empowerment’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 12 (2020): 301–20.
13 Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Litigation’; Stuart Kirsch, ‘Juridification of Indigenous Politics’, in Law Against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations, ed. Julia Eckert et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 23–43; Rachel Sieder, ‘The Juridification of Politics’, The Oxford Handbook of Law and Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
14 Rachel Sieder, Cultures of Legality: Judicialization and Political Activism in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Sieder, ‘The Juridification of Politics’; Stuart Kirsch, ‘Dilemmas of an Expert Witness in the Amazon’, Working Paper No. 428 (Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, 2018), https://kellogg.nd.edu/sites/default/files/working_papers/Kirsch%20WP%20428%20FINAL.pdf (accessed March 3, 2023).
15 Sonia Lawrence and Signa Daum Shanks, ‘Indigenous Lawyers in Canada: Identity, Professionalization, Law’, Dalhousie Law Journal 38, no. 2 (2015): 503–24.
16 Lieselotte Viaene, ‘Can Rights of Nature Save us from the Anthropocene Catastrophe? Critical Reflections from the Field on the Emerging Ecological Jurisprudence’, Asian Journal of Law and Society 9 (2022): 187–206.
17 Lieselotte Viaene, ‘Indigenous Water Ontologies, Hydro-development and the Human/more-than-human Right to Water: a Call for Critical Engagement with Plurilegal Water Realities’, Water 13, no. 12 (2021).
18 Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Bertram Turner, ‘Anthropological Roots of Global Legal Pluralism’, in The Oxford Handbook of Global Legal Pluralism, ed. Paul Schiff Berman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 138.
19 Chas Jewett and Mark Garavan, ‘Water is Life – an Indigenous Perspective from a Standing Rock Water Protector’, Community Development Journal 49 (2018).
20 John Law, ‘On Sociology and STS’, Sociological Review 56, no. 4 (2008): 636–7.
21 Viaene, ‘Indigenous Water Ontologies’.
22 Von Benda-Beckmann and Turner, ‘Anthropological Roots’, 139.
23 María Ximena González-Serrano and Lieselotte Viaene, ‘La acción jurídica indígena en Guatemala. Voces de resistencia y conexión de mundos antes las Cortes’, in Aguas Turbias: Extractivismo neoliberal, acción jurídica indígena y transformación del Estado en Guatemala, ed. Viaene Lieselotte and Xon María Jacinta (Guatemala: RIVERS ERC Project, 2022).
24 This research is part of the project RIVERS-Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation (2019–2025), financed by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC), with Guatemala, Colombia, Nepal and the UN human rights system as research contexts. In Colombia, the project has been collaborating with Indigenous Arhuaca judge Belkis Izquierdo of the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP), the justice component of the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition created by the Peace Agreements between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) in 2016. See Teaser ERC RIVERS project documentary COLOMBIA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uyJh3tHAFY&t=34s. In Nepal, the project is collaborating with the Lawyers’ Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples (LAHURNIP), which has been involved in a successful joint complaint, together with the FPIC and Rights Forum from Langjung, to the Complaints Mechanism of the European Investment Bank (EIB) regarding the 220kv Marsyangdi Corridor high-voltage transmission line and associated hydropower sector development. See also: Lieselotte Viaene, ‘Indigenous legal expertise to defend Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Third Pole country Nepal’, Jindal Global Law Review, 14, no. 2 (2023 forthcomming). The RIVERS project is also producing a Podcast Weaving Waters which creates a mosaic that brings together the voices of Indigenous filmmakers, judges, lawyers, journalists and academics from different parts of the world. One of the podcast episodes is focused on Indigenous Lawyers. Available at: Weaving Waters Podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3er65uvRd5ruX5EMnrsLyU?si=01c63c2e93a84e6e. Accessed 26 October 2023.
For more information about this research project: www.rivers-ercproject.eu
25 Lieselotte Viaene, La Hidroeléctrica Xalalá en territorios maya q’eqchi’ de Guatemala ¿Qué pasará con nuestra tierra y agua sagradas? Un análisis antropológico-jurídico de los derechos humanos amenazados (Herent-Belgium: Ghent University, 2015).
26 More information is available at: https://comunitariapress.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/un-preso-politico-mas-rigoberto-juarez-defensor-del-territorio-2/ (accessed March 3, 2023).
27 Seminar ‘A Critical Look to Water Disputes’.
28 International Symposium ‘A Critical Look at Water Litigation: A Dialogue between Guatemala and Colombia’, organised by the ERC RIVERS research project in collaboration with the mandate holder of the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Madrid, 2023.Youtube: https://rivers-ercproject.eu/symposium-Indigenous-peoples-water/ (accessed March 3, 2023).
29 Ture Kwame and Charles Hamilton, Black Power. The Politics of Liberation in America. (New York: Random House, 1967); Barnor Hesse, ‘Discourse on Institutional Racism: The Genealogy of a Concept’, in Institutional Racism in Higher Education, ed. Ian Law, Deborah Phillips, and Laura Turney (Trent: Trentham Books, 2004), 131–47.
30 Aura Cumes, ‘Aquí́ no hay racismo, aquí́́ hay interculturalidad’, in Racismo en Guatemala (Guatemala: Siglo XXI Editores, 2004).
31 Amanda Pop Bol, ‘Racismo y machismo: deshilando la opresión’, in Identidad: rostros sin máscara, comps. Morna Macleod and M. Luisa Cabrera Pérez-Armiñan (Guatemala: Oxfam Australia, 2000).
32 Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico, Guatemala, memoria del silencio, 34.
33 Raquel Yrigoyen Fajardo, ‘El debate sobre el reconocimiento constitucional del derecho indígena en Guatemala’, América Indígena Vol. LVIII, No. 1–2 (1999).
34 Rigoberto Quemé, ‘El racismo en Guatemala’, in Diagnóstico del racismo en Guatemala: Investigación interdisplinaria y participativa para una política integral por la convivencia y eliminación del racismo, ed. Marta Elena Casaús and Amilcar Dávila, Vol. IV (2006), 31.
35 Emma Chirix, Estudio sobre racismo, discriminación y brechas de desigualdad en Guatemala. Una mirada conceptual (Mexico: CEPAL, 2019).
36 Marta Elena Casaús, La metamorfosis del racismo en Guatemala (Guatemala: Editorial Cholsamaj, 1998); Chirix, Estudio sobre racismo.
37 Aróstegui Mely González, ‘Cultura de la resistencia. Concepciones teóricas y metodológicas para su estudio’, ISLAS 127 (2017): 20–41.
38 Chirix, Estudio sobre racismo, 41.
39 Demetrio Cojtí, Ub'anik ri una'ooj uchomab'aal ri maya tinamit (Guatemala: Cholsamaj, 1995); Marta Elena Casaús, ‘El Racismo y la Discriminación en el Lenguaje Político de las Elites Intelectuales en Guatemala’, Discurso & Sociedad 3, no. 4 (2009): 592–620.
40 Eve Darian-Smith and Peter Fitzpatrick, eds., Laws of the Postcolonial (Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1999); Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); John Comaroff, ‘Colonialism, Culture and the Law’, Law and Social Inquiry 26, no. 2 (2001): 305–14; Renisa Mawani, ‘Law and Colonialism: Legacies and Lineages’, in The Handbook of Law and Society, ed. Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick (John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 418–32.
41 Natsu Taylor Saito, ‘Tales of Color and Colonialism: Racial Realism and Settler Colonial Theory’, Florida A&M University Law Review 10 (2014), https://commons.law.famu.edu/famulawreview/vol10/iss1/3 (accessed March 3, 2023); Pedro Garzón, ‘Pluralismo jurídico, derechos indígena y colonialidad jurídica’, Ius Inkarri Revista e la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencia Política 8 (2019): 215–26; María Ximena González-Serrano, Digno Montalván-Zambrano and Viaene Lieselotte, ‘Hacia la descolonización del régimen extractivo: patrones y límites de la judicialización de conflictos mineros’, Iconos-Revista de Ciencias Sociales 72 (2022): 97–116; Viaene, ‘Indigenous Water Ontologies’.
42 Benito Morales is an Indigenous lawyer and politician, who has collaborated with different organisations, among them the Council of Mayan People and Fundación Rigoberta Menchú. He was also a presidential candidate for the political party Convergencia. Benito Morales, interview by the authors, 8 July 2021.
43 Lawrence and Daum Shanks, ‘Indigenous Lawyers in Canada’.
44 Duffy, ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation’; Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Litigation’; Salvador Herencia Carrasco, ‘Public Interest Litigation in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights: The Protection of Indigenous Peoples and the Gap between Legal Victories and Social Change’, Quebec Journal of International Law (2015): 199–220; Sandra Carvalho and Eduardo Baker, ‘Strategic Litigation Experiences in the Inter-American Human Rights System’, Sur-International Journal on Human Rights 20 (2014): 449–59.
45 Duffy, ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation’.
46 Malcom Langford, ‘The Impact of Public Interest Litigation: The Case of Socio-economic Rights’, Australian Journal of Human Rights 27, no. 3 (2021): 505–31; Andreas Fischer-Lescano, ‘From Strategic Litigation to Juridical Action’, in Transnational Legal Activism in Global Value Chains. The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire and the Struggle for Justice, ed. Miriam Saage-Maas et al., Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Rights 6 (Springer, 2021), 299.
47 Duffy, ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation’; Gilbert, ‘Indigenous Peoples and Litigation’.
48 Amilcar Pop was also founder of the first Mayan Student Association at the Public Universidad de San Carlos in the early 1990s and has been the main litigator in several emblematic cases regarding FPIC. He was a deputy in Congress for the WINAQ political movement.
49 Amilcar Pop, interview by the authors, 21 September 2021.
50 Myriam Chavajay, interview by the authors, 6 December 2021.
51 Amilcar Pop, interview, 2021.
52 Romeo Tiu, interview by the authors, 12 July 2021.
53 Pedro Ixchíu, interview by the authors, 7 July 2021.
54 Morales, interview, 2021.
55 Stuart Scheingold, The Politics of Rights. Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2004); Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingol, eds., Cause Lawyering: Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kieran McEvoy, Louise Mallinder and Anna Bryson, Lawyers in Conflict and Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
56 Orlando Aragón Andrade, ‘Intercultural Translation and the Ecology of Legal Knowledges in the Experience of Cherán, Mexico: Elements for a New Critical and Militant Legal Practice’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 15 (2020): 86–103; Irán Guerrero Andrade, ‘La abogacía activista en México. Un análisis de la práctica del derecho de las abogadas y los abogados de las ONG’s de derechos humanos en contextos de excepción’ (PhD diss., México FLACSO, 2017); Francisco Vértiz, ‘Los abogados populares y sus prácticas profesionales. Hacia una aplicación práctica de la crítica jurídica’, Crítica Jurídica 35 (2013): 251–74.
57 McEvoy et al., Lawyers in Conflict and Transition, 7.
58 Sally Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights and Local Activism: Mapping the Middle’, American Anthropologist 108 no. 1 (2006): 38–51.
59 Wendy López, interview by the authors, 23 September 2021.
60 Merry, ‘Transnational Human Rights’.
61 Ricarda Flemmer, ‘Stuck in the Middle: Indigenous Interpreters and the Politics of Vernacularization in Peru’, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 23 (2018): 521–40.
62 Thomas Sikor et al., ‘Brokering Justice: Global Indigenous Rights and Struggles over Hydropower in Nepal’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies (2018): 1–19.
63 Flemmer, ‘Stuck in the Middle’, 522.
64 Chas Jewett and Mark Garavan, ‘Water Is Life – An Indigenous Perspective from a Standing Rock Water Protector’, Community Development Journal 54, no.1 (2019): 42–58.
65 Ixchíu, interview, 2021.
66 McEvoy et al., Lawyers in Conflict and Transition, 3.
67 Cristian Otzín, interview by the authors, 29 November 2021.
68 López, interview, 2021.
69 Lucy Claridge, ‘Litigation as a Tool for Community Empowerment: The Case of Kenya’s Ogiek’, Erasmus Law Review 1 (2018): 57–66.
70 In Guatemala there are 22 Maya ethnic linguistic communities, as well a Chorti community and afro-descended Garifuna communities.
71 Otzín, interview, 2021.
72 Fischer-Lescano, ‘From Strategic Litigation’.
73 Barbora Bukovska, ‘Perpetrating Good: Unintended Consequences of International Human Rights Advocacy’, Revista Internacional de Direitos Humanos 9 (2008): 6–21.
74 Duffy, ‘Strategic Human Rights Litigation’.
75 Stuart Kirsch, ‘Dilemmas of an Expert Witness’; Stuart Kirsch, ‘Dilemas del perito experto: derechos indígenas a la tierra en Surinam y Guyana’, Desacatos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 57 (2018), https://desacatos.ciesas.edu.mx/index.php/Desacatos/issue/view/106 (accessed March 3, 2023).
76 Chirix, Estudio sobre racismo.
77 Val Napoleon, ‘Thinking About Indigenous Legal Orders’, in Dialogues on Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, ed. Rene Provost and Colleen Sheppard (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2013), 240.
78 Otzín, interview, 2021.
79 Ibíd.
80 Ibíd.
81 Lieselotte Viaene, ‘Life is Priceless: Mayan Q’eqchi’ Voices on Guatemalan National Reparations Program’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 4 (2009): 4–25.
82 Laurel Fletcher and Harvey Weinstein, ‘How Power Dynamics Influence the “North-South” Gap in Transitional Justice’, Berkeley Journal of International Law 36, no.2 (2018): 190–217; Brinton Lykes and Hugo Van der Merwe, ‘Critical Reflexivity and Transitional Justice Praxis: Solidarity, Accompaniment and Intermediary’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 13 (2019): 411–6; Belkis Izquierdo and Lieselotte Viaene, ‘Decolonizing transitional justice from Indigenous territories’, Por la Paz 34 (2018); Lieselotte Viaene; Peter Doran and Jonathan Lejiblad, ‘Editorial Special Section: Transitional Justice and Nature: a curious silence’, International Journal of Transitional Justice, 17, no. 1 (2023): 1–14.
83 Impunity Watch, Alianza Rompiendo el Silencio y la Impunidad, ECAP, MTM, UNAMG, Cambiando el rostro de la justicia. Las claves del litigio estratégico del Caso Sepur Zarco (Guatemala: Impunity Watch and Alianza Rompiendo el Silencio y la Impunidad, 2017).
84 Article 58 of the Guatemalan Constitution recognises ‘the right of people and communities to a cultural identity according to their values, language, and customs’. Article 66 indicates that ‘Guatemala is made up of diverse ethnic groups including Indigenous groups of Mayan origin. The State recognizes, respects, and promotes ways of life, customs, traditions, forms of social organization, the use of the Indigenous dress in men and women, languages, and dialects.’
85 Sieder, ‘The Juridification of Politics’.
86 Carlos Ochoa, Diálogo: señal de nuestra existencia. Retal Qatzij. Concepción, uso y manejo del diálogo por las autoridades indígenas (Guatemala: Asociación de Investigación y Estudios Sociales, 2014), 8.
87 Shadow Report PIDESC, 2014, 14.
88 Amilcar Pop, interview, 2021.
89 Also see this article: https://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/dos-justicias-en-las-cortes (accessed March 3, 2023).
90 Lucia Xiloj, interview by the authors, 7 July 2021.
91 Appeal Court of the Civil Branch, Amparo No 01044-2012-363, 16 October 2012.
92 Association of Lawyers and Mayan Notaries (2017).
93 For more information, see Centro de Estudios Integrados de Desarrollo Comunal, Guatemala. Polos de Desarrollo. El caso de la Desestructuración de las Comunidades Indígenas (México: Editorial Praxis, 1998).
94 Cultural Survival, ‘Pueblos mayas Ixiles y Ch’orti’s recuperan certeza jurídica sobre sus tierras’ (2020), https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/pueblos-mayas-ixiles-y-chortis-recuperan-certeza-juridica-sobre-sus-tierras#:~:text=El%2013%20de%20julio%20de,otra%20vez%20al%20t%C3%ADtulo%20original (accessed March 3, 2023).
95 Xiloj, interview, 2021.
96 Juan Castro, interview by the authors, 24 November 2021.
97 Morales, interview, 2021.
98 Eddie Cux, interview by the authors, 8 July 2021.
99 Padilla Diego, ‘El extractivismo (neo)liberal en Guatemala. Una mirada histórica crítica a la formación del Estado y la explotación del agua’, in Aguas Turbias: Extractivismo neoliberal, acción jurídica indígena y transformación del Estado en Guatemala, ed. Xon María Jacinta and Viaene Lieselotte (Guatemala: RIVERS ERC Project, 2022), 15–47.
100 Sieder, ‘The Juridification of Politics’, 2020.
101 Constitutional Court of Guatemala, Ruling November 7, File 452–2019, (2019) 8.
102 Ibíd.
103 International Symposium ‘A critical look at water litigation’.
104 Viaene, ‘Indigenous Water Ontologies’, 1.
105 Ibíd.
106 Viaene, Can Rights of Nature Save us from the Anthropocene Catastrophe? 187–206; Minhea Tanasescu, Understanding the Rights of Nature. A Critical Introduction (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022); Elizabeth Macpherson, Alex Borchgrevink, Rahul Ranjan and Catalina Vallejo Piedrahíta, ‘Where ordinary laws fall short: "Riverine rights" and constitutionalism’, Griffith Law Review, 30, no. 3 (2021): 438–73 .
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Notes on contributors
Lieselotte Viaene
Lieselotte Viaene is a Belgian-Flemish anthropologist with a PhD in Law (2011, Ghent University, Belgium), with 20 years of mixed academic and practitioner experience working on the issues of armed conflict, transitional justice, indigenous peoples’ rights and extractivism in Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Colombia and Nepal. Since 2019, she is developping her ERC project titled RIVERS – Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation at the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain).
María Ximena González-Serrano
María Ximena González-Serrano is a Colombian lawyer with more than 15 years of experience in strategic litigation and socio-legal research on ethnic rights in Colombia. She is currently developping her PhD at the University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) and has been a doctoral researcher in the ERC research project RIVERS – Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation.